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Thursday, September 7, 1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Here's a nagging question: Want to quit smoking?
But we won't nag you about it. We just want to help. It's hard to stop smoking. And it doesn't help when friends and family bug you about it.
Maybe you should try the "No-Nag, No-Gult, Do-It-Your-Own-Way" Quitting Smoking Program. It's a positive approach based on what smokers said would help them quit.
To set up an appointment call Health Promotion at 864-9570. There is a $6 charge for the accompanying book.
Student explores ancient ruins
Mayan city discovered in Central America
By Novelda Sommers
Kansan staff writer
A KU student helped discover the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in Belize this summer.
But the spider monkeys in residence at the ruins did not share James Eckhardt's elation at the discovery. The monkeys tried to chase away Eckhardt and his colleagues by urinating on them.
"That's how they protect their territory. They had never seen humans before," said Eckhardt, D-Soto senior.
Eckhardt, an archeology major, spent the summer working at a field school conducted by the University of Texas-Austin. The field school is on the Rio Bravo preserve in northwestern Belize.
Few people have explored the remote territory since Mayan civilizations died out about 1,000 years ago. As a result, archeologists still are discovering Mayan ruins in the area. Eckhardt said.
"I know it seems strange that here we are in the 1990s and still discovering Mayan ruins," said Fred Valdez, director of the field school and associate professor of archeology at the University of Texas-Austin. "The ground cover is so thick, and some of these
places are so hard to get to that no one has been back there for over a century."
Valdez said that for a short time about a hundred years ago, there was logging in the area but that the loggers didn't pay any attention to the ancient Mayan structures. After centuries of vacancy, the temples were covered with vegetation and looked like hills.
The discovery made by Eckhardt and seven other students from the field school amounted to several large temples, a central village marketplace and two ball courts where young Mayan men played games with a rubber ball, or sometimes an enemy's head. The structures probably were built around 850 A.D., Valdez said.
Valdez said it was unusual for an undergraduate to discover ruins unseen by humans for centuries. Usually, field schools are conducted at well-established sites.
The University of Texas-Austin field school is conducted every summer with Project for Belize, a private conservation group established in 1992. The protected area where the groups work encompasses 230,000 acres of territory, much of it unmapped.
50 archeological sites have been discovered on the reserve, and most of them were discovered after the project was established. Valdez said he suspected many more were yet to be discovered.
"At Project for Belize, students can go on survey and come back with new things. That's where they get the thrill of discovery," he said.
For Eckhardt and the other students with him, the thrill of discovery had an added bonus. They got to choose a name for the site.
"We named it Maax Na, "Eck-hardt said. "That's Mayan for 'Monkey House.'"
Co-founder of Maupintour dies
The Associated Press
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — H. Neil Mecaskey, a founder and former chairman of Maupintour Inc., a leading seller of upscale escorted tours, has died at age 66.
Mecaskey died Tuesday at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. The cause of death was not released. A private service was scheduled.
Mecaskey, who lived near Lawrence, founded the travel serv
ice in 1955 with Tom Maupin after purchasing the Travel House in Lawrence. Maupin died in 1985.
"With Tom Maupin, he built Maupintour into an internationally known and respected company and kept that company in Lawrence, Kan., when others might have moved it," said John W. Brand Jr., a Lawrence lawyer.
Mecaskey and Maupin built the firm from a storefront travel agency
into a company that had as many eight retail travel offices and an international tour business at one point. When Mecaskey retired as chairman in 1993, the escorted tour division had 140 employees.
Mecaskey transferred control of Maupintour to the board of directors and other associates when he retired. The company was sold earlier this year to Summakersp Travel Group of Seattle.
Kansan Classifieds get results.